


The one where Bucky and Steve dance in the rain to David Bowie

by chicklette



Series: Popcorn Bucket [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Best Friends, Ficlet, Friendship/Love, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 20:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13419255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicklette/pseuds/chicklette
Summary: Steve is a serial monogamist and Bucky is the best friend who pines.





	The one where Bucky and Steve dance in the rain to David Bowie

**Author's Note:**

> A very nice anon sent me a message that mentioned dancing in the rain, so of course, all I could do was picture these two idiots, dancing in the rain. Unbetad; feel free to point out mistakes.

The music from the jukebox is loud, but not overbearing.  It’s currently playing classic rock, which Bucky doesn’t mind one bit.  He’s got a table in the back, two pints and two shots of Jameson in front of him.  He’s just about to pull out his phone to text when he sees Steve make his way to the back of the bar, shaking rain out of his hair and pulling off his coat.

He looks – Jesus he looks good.  His hair’s a little bit too long, and he’s shaking drops of rain out of it like a dog.  But the wide shoulders are even wider in the navy blue pea coat that he’s wearing, and the color, combined with the dark room, are making Steve’s eyes look dark blue.  He’s gorgeous. 

When Steve sits, Bucky pushes one of the shots forward.

Steve gives him a miserable smile before picking up his shot.  The two of them toast to Brooklyn, which is corny as fuck, but it’s the toast Bucky’s dad always makes, so it was the first thing that Bucky and Steve ever toasted to.  Now every first toast is for Brooklyn, and Bucky’s feeling certain that there will be a fair few toasts tonight.

“Alright,” Bucky says, glad he doesn’t have to yell to be heard over the music.  “What happened?”

Shrugging, Steve stares at his pint.  When he meets Bucky’s eyes, he looks miserable.  “I dunno.  She said she couldn’t do it anymore, handed me a box of my stuff, and left.  Least I got my favorite hoodie back,” he says, looking down at his SUNY sweatshirt.

“She didn’t say anything else?”  It’s not like Bucky’s never been here before.  Counseling Steve after a heartbreak is something he does a couple of times a year.  By now, he feels like he’s probably earned his LCSW – Licensed Clinical STEVE Worker.

It’s fine – as much as it can be.  Not anyone’s fault he’s been gone on his straight best friend nearly his whole life.  Just the luck of the draw.

“She said ‘I thought I could do this, but I was wrong.’  When I asked her what she meant, she told me not to be an asshole, and left.”  Steve shrugs and downs half of his beer at a go.  Bucky signals Nat, the bartender, for another round.  She takes one look at the two of them and pours doubles.

He’s never told Nat about how he feels about Steve, but somehow she just knows.  Once, he’d been at the bar, watching Steve and his latest girlfriend dancing on the bar’s tiny dance floor. (Say what you will about the guy, he’s never been one for casual relationship – oh no – Stevie Rogers had to fall in love with the girls he was dating, or at least give a damn fine impression of it)

“You need this,” she’d said, floating a shot glass of Jamie his way.

“I don’t –“ he’d replied.

She cocked one brow his way before turning and looking fondly at the doorman – a blonde with a penchant for purple, coffee, and dick, before pushing the glass back toward him.  

She’s the only person who’s ever learned his secret, and she’s been a good friend to him over the years.

“Hey, man,” Bucky says, and reaches out to squeeze Steve’s shoulder.  “If she couldn’t see you for the great guy you are, then she’s not worth thinking twice about.”

Steve nods, but there’s a sadness in his gaze that Bucky knows oh, so well.

What Steve wants, what he really wants, is to settle down.  He wants to find the love of his life, and buy a house and have some kids and take vacations in the summers and build model planes with the girls and have tea parties with the boys, because fuck misogyny.  He wants every single mundane, simple, happy moment out of this life that he can get. ‘Everyday joy,’ he’d called it, and God, does Bucky see the appeal.

Steve just can’t seem to find the girl who wants to live that dream with him.

“Come on,” Bucky says.  “Let’s get fucked up.”

So they do.  Nat keeps the drinks coming, and before long, Steve and Bucky are laughing so damned hard at what Jimmy Morita did in the sixth grade that they’re crying and holding on to each other to keep from falling down.

“And she said – d’ya ‘member?”

“Oh, god,” Bucky says, laughing and trying not to fall off of his chair, before proceeding in a high falsetto, tinged with a Southern accent.  “At least in Baton Rouge they have _manners!_ ”

Steve howls with laughter and Bucky’s side stitches.  It takes them a moment to calm down, and when Bucky looks up, Steve is actually crying.

“Aw, Stevie,” Bucky says, and puts his arm around Steve, pulling him close.

God fucking damn Sharon Carter for breaking his heart.  Bucky will hate her until the day he dies for making his best friend cry.

“Did you really love her?” Bucky asks, both needing to know the answer and hating himself for asking.  Why does he keep torturing himself like this?

Steve looks down and sniffles, before wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve.  Punk might have grown into his attitude – at 6’2” and 200 pounds, he can finally finish all the fights he starts – but inside?  Inside Steve Rogers is a total marshmallow.

Blinking, Steve looks at Bucky.  “I don’t think I did,” he says, and his face crumples again.  “How fucked up is that?  I don’t even think I loved her.  I just – I just want to be happy.  I want…”  I want what your folks have, is what he doesn’t say.  I want what _my_ folks had, goes unsaid, but heard loud and clear, regardless.

It’s what Bucky wants, too.  They had had a great childhood.  They grew up as next-door neighbors, and their folks hit it off like wildfire.  Growing up, Steve spent as much time at Bucky’s house as he did his own.  Then when his father died (freak heart attack out of nowhere), Bucky’s folks had stepped in and half-raised Steve: Winnie watching the boys while Steve’s mother worked, George taking the boys out camping and fishing, teaching them about the outdoors.

(“Does she have to come?” the boys would say, eyeing Becca Barnes and her knobby knees and her dolls.  “Be nice,” George Barnes would say, and the four of them would troop off into the woods, learning to identify plants and animals, how to build a fire and make sure the water wouldn’t make them sick.  There was a time when Bucky thought maybe Steve and Becca would get together, and he could have been okay with that, he thought.  Then, at least, they’d be brothers.  But Becca met Davey Proctor her junior year of college, and that was that.)

“Stevie,” Bucky says again, and Steve buries his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck.

Bucky rubs his back, eyes darting around the room to see Nat watching them with careful eyes.  He looks away, feeling his face heat.  He doesn’t need the reminder of how fucked the situation is.

He _wants_ to move on.  Hell, it’s not like he hasn’t tried.  But he’s never found anyone who’s even half as interesting as Steve.  It’s like one day, Bucky blinked and realized that his best friend was the only man he was ever really going to love.

Inconvenient, to say the least.

At Nat’s pitying look, Bucky’s skin grows tight.

The music changes and Steve chokes a laugh, before tipping his head back.  “Jesus,” he says, then looks at Bucky, who’s grinning like a madman.  This song.  This _song._

“C’mon,” Bucky says.  The music’s gotten loud enough that they have to yell into each other’s ears, but it doesn’t matter because this is their _song._

The first time Steve heard David Bowie, he’d immediately run to find his best friend and tell him all about the amazing albums he’d found in his mother’s collection.  Bucky’s teen years could be mapped surely and succinctly by the different phases of Bowie’s career:  They’d been freshmen for the “Let’s Dance,” phase, sophomores for Aladdin Sane, and seniors for Scary Monsters.  But the year they’d learned to drive, the year that Steve had shot up and filled out, and the year that Bucky first realized that he was irrevocably in love with his best friend – that year, they’d listened to Heroes.  They’d danced to it, sang to it, Bucky came out to Steve to it, Steve had had his first kiss to it (Peggy Carter, who, years later, turned out to have a cousin named Sharon) – that year was filled with firsts, and David Bowie crooned them along toward adulthood.

Bucky drags Steve by the hand out into the street.  It’s raining still, and the street is painted in neon, reflecting from the shops, colors slipping between wet windows and wet sidewalks, making everything feel unreal.

Steve’s laughing, stomping into the puddles, and Bucky starts screaming the words to the song:

“I – I would be king!”

“And you,” Steve chimes in, “you would be _queen!_ ”

“Though nothing, nothing would drive them away,” the pair screams.  They are dancing and singing in the street like absolute lunatics, the rain showering them, soaking their hair and their skin and their clothes, and it’s the happiest Bucky has been – the happiest he has seen Steve – in a year.

“We can be heroes,” they sing, and Bucky comes in close, then grabs Steve and dips him back.

“We can be _us_ , just for one day.”

Steve straightens and shakes his head, water flying off in a rainbow of droplets, reflecting the neon red, white, and blue Pabst sign in the window.

“You’re a lunatic,” he says.

“Made you smile,” Bucky grins, and the two of them laugh.  Bucky knows that he is never going to be over Steve.  Never.

It breaks his heart.

Walking back into the bar, Bucky lets the cold and wet sober him up some.

“I gotta get out of here, man,” he says.  “You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, Buck.  ‘Course.  Hey,” he says, and grabs Bucky up into a long, tight hug.  “Thank you.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says, because he’s just drunk enough to let himself wonder what it would be like to drag his lips across the damp skin at Steve’s neck, where he smells warm and safe and like home.  “Call you tomorrow,” he says, and pushes away.

He walks to the bar to push a couple of twenties Nat’s way, but she pushes them back.  “Loverboy’s got this one,” she says, and Bucky shrugs.

He needs to get himself home before he does something really stupid.

.

Bucky’s not sure what time it is when he’s woken up by a pounding at the front door.

“What the fuck?” he mumbles, then looks at his phone.  It’s after three and he has four missed calls from Steve.

Fuuuuck.

He’s stumbling into a pair of boxers and fishing around for a t-shirt when the front door opens.  They’ve had keys to each other’s places since they’ve _had_ places.  It’s not unusual for Bucky to wake up to find Steve asleep on his couch, having fought with a girl and gotten drunk and not wanted to go home to an empty apartment.

“Dude,” Bucky says, walking out into the living room where Steve is standing tall.  Bucky’s sober now, and his mouth tastes like ass, and he has to be at work in just a few hours.  “What the fuck?”

“Is it true?” Steve asks.  He stands just a little taller, and Bucky would recognize Steve “fight me” Rogers getting ready for a brawl from a hundred paces in a snowstorm.

“What?” he asks, feeling stupid.  He definitely does not have the script for whatever this is.

“What Nat said.  Is it true?”

Bucky’s stomach clenches in the moment he hears Nat’s name.   _God, she wouldn’t_ he thinks, even as he is four thousand percent positive that she would.  His heart hammers so hard he can hear it whooshing, inside his head.

“Stevie,” Bucky says, because if Steve is still kind of drunk, maybe by morning he’ll have forgotten all about this.  “Come on, let’s get you to bed.  Grab some pillows,” he says, turning toward the hall closet for blankets.

Steve grabs him by the wrist, swings him back around and gets right into his face.

“Is it?  She said,” Steve blinks and swallows before going on.  “She said you’re in love in with me.  Why would she say that Buck? Why –“ Steve closes his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath.

“Steve,” Bucky says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.  What do you say to the man who is your truth, but also your only lie?  “Come on,” Bucky says, and tries to step away, but Steve holds him tight, right there.

Bucky is – he’s terrified.

“I used to think you had it on lock,” Steve says, and even in the darkened room, even in just the moonlight, Bucky can see how blue his eyes are.  “Bucky Barnes, he’s never gonna get his heart broken like some chump.  Isn’t that right?”

Bucky swallows.  He is so scared, and everything inside of him hurts so bad that he wants to cry.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky says, looking down, and then the worst thought, the one that’s so bad he’s never even thought it before, that one comes rushing out of his mouth.  “Does it?  Because if it does – if it –“ His voice breaks and he hates himself a little right then.  “If you don’t want to be my friend-“

“Oh, shut up! Shut –“

And then Steve is kissing him. He has both hands on Bucky’s shoulders and he’s gripping him so tight and he’s pressing his mouth to Bucky’s hard enough that his lips are going to go numb.

Steve pushes away and the two of them stare at each other, panting.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know!”

“Why would you -?”

“I just –“

“You’re an asshole!” Bucky shouts.

“Well, I learned from the best!” Steve answers, before reeling Bucky in for another kiss.

This time it’s softer, but it’s also messy and desperate, Steve clinging to Bucky, wrapping Bucky right up into his arms and threading his fingers through Bucky’s hair, tilting Bucky’s head and when Bucky opens his mouth (instinct, it’s instinct, he tells himself) Steve licks into it with a gasp.

It’s gorgeous and terrible.  It’s either the worst first kiss or the best last kiss, and Bucky isn’t sure he’s ready for either.  Not after all this time.

“Steve,” Bucky says, pulling back.

Steve presses his forehead against Bucky’s, breathing hard against Bucky’s lips.

“She said I was an idiot if I couldn’t see what was right in front of me and _I am_ an idiot because I thought she was talking about herself but then she gave me that look and I thought – it couldn’t  - I mean, I would have known, right?  But it made me think back to a few months ago, me and you were at that Mets game, remember?  And we were on the subway coming back – we were both a little day drunk and just talking and laughing on the train, and you got off at your stop and we hugged and you kissed my cheek – you remember that day?”

Bucky nods.  Of course, he remembers it.  They’d started drinking at Bucky’s place even before the game, and they’d spent the whole day leaning into one another, propping each other up, soaking in the sunshine and the booze and it was perfect.  They were just drunk enough by the end of it for Bucky to lay a smack against Steve’s cheek, the quick, rough scratch of Steve’s stubble against his lips. As he’d sobered up, he’d worried that he’d given himself away, but the next day, nothing had changed, and Bucky locked that memory away, along with all of the others that hurt too much to look at often.

“There was a girl on the train sitting opposite us. She said ‘I wish my boyfriend looked at me that way.  You two are goals.’  I laughed it off, but…it made me think.  And then tonight I called Sharon and she said she couldn’t compete with you, and she was tired of trying, and Bucky,” Steve says, and he draws back to look at Bucky, his eyes full of questions.  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Steve asks.

“Didn’t want you to know.  Didn’t – I don’t want to lose our friendship,” Bucky says.  He leans in, leans his head against Steve’s chest, leaving a space between them, just enough for a confession. “I love you.”

And he does.  Steve is his best friend and his most ardent fantasy and he doesn’t know how to separate his love for eight year old Stevie Rogers with a bloody lip on the playground from eighteen year old Steven (and wasn’t that a hilarious phase?) who was daydreaming about girls from twenty-eight year old Steve who is his best friend and who had just kissed him within an inch of his life.

“Who says you’d lose me?” Steve asks, and he leans back before running a fingertip along Bucky’s jaw, and looking at Bucky with something like wonder.

“Stevie.  You’re not gay.  That’s gonna be a problem, don’t you think?”

“No,” Steve says.  “I’m bi.  I think so, anyway.”

“You think so?  Stevie, come on.  You don’t – you don’t gotta do this, okay?  We’re fine, just like we are. It’s not – it’ll go away, you know?” And damn if that’s not the filthiest lie he’s ever told.

“Is that what you want?”

Bucky can’t say yes.  He can tell a lot of lies and half-truths, but he can’t bring himself to tell this particular lie.

“Come on,” Bucky says, and takes a step back.  “It’s almost four in the morning.  Let’s just…sleep it off.  Come on,” he says, and turns toward the bedroom.

“You are such a stubborn fucking shit,” Steve says, before pulling Bucky back into the puddle of moonlight leaking in through the window.  

“We can’t,” Bucky says, pulling back.  “You can’t – you have to – Jesus, Steve, you have to mean it. We won’t – we won’t make it back from this if you don’t.”

He searches Steve’s eyes for something, some sign that Steve understands what he’s saying.  Bucky would have been just fine eating his heart out for the rest of his life, and never having Steve quite the way he wants him.  He would have been fine with that.

But this?  Kissing Steve and touching Steve and getting this close to what he wants? If Steve decides in three months that he’s not a little gay after all?  There’s no way they’ll be able to come back from that.

Steve’s watching Bucky’s face, searching his eyes. He pulls Bucky back in, so that they’re chest to chest, knee to knee, and he takes Bucky’s face in his hands.

“I’m so sorry, Buck.  I’m sorry that I didn’t see you, and I’m sorry that you had to wait here, all this time, without me.  But I’m here now, and I’m not letting you go.”  

He looks at Bucky, and then blinks. “Jesus,” he says, and cups Bucky’s cheek.  “Look at you.”  

Steve slides his fingers into Bucky’s hair, cradling his head, before dipping down for a soft, warm kiss.  

It’s not the hard, something-to-prove first kiss, and it’s not the messy, not-sure-what’s-happening second kiss. This kiss is easy and full of gentle intent. This is a kiss that Bucky can believe in.  

This kiss is _perfect._

The kiss deepens, Steve pulling Bucky all the way into his space, wrapping his arms around Bucky and holding him tight. Bucky brings his arms up around Steve’s neck, pressing even further in and it’s – oh – it’s just exactly what he’s wanted, all these years, all this time.

They kiss and they kiss and they kiss.  Bucky feels warm, wet tracks running down his face, and Steve’s warm thumb wipes them away.  And still they kiss.

In the morning, they kiss some more, even though they’re bleary-eyed and their mouths taste terrible.

Three months later, they kiss at the threshold of their new apartment, Bucky holding a box on his hip and Steve with a rug under his arm. They kiss past Valentine’s day and through Easter, the first day of spring, and then of summer.  Their kisses are sweet with chocolate or salty from the ocean, or boozy from one too many of Nat’s drinks.  They taste of eggnog and then champagne, bubbly, fizzy kisses, and after another year passes by, they kiss to the applause of their loved ones, sliding golden bands onto one another’s fingers.

They kiss through promotions and raises, and at the threshold of a new house, a bigger house.  A house with a yard.  They share giggling kisses over the yelps of their new puppy, and a soft, tender-sweet kiss while holding Becca’s baby boy.  

There is a kiss in a lawyer’s office, full of excitement and hope for a life that might soon be theirs to nurture, and then there are kisses through tears, as that dream falls apart. There is another kiss soon after, though, one interrupted by a baby’s harsh cry, and a few years later, it happens again.

“I’m never going to sleep again, am I?” Bucky asks, flopping onto the bed.  Steve is propped against the headboard, glasses on and reading through a thick stack of briefs.  He’s in court next week on an immigration case, and he’s been working himself ragged, trying to perfect his arguments.

“No,” Steve answers.  “Probably not.”  He sets the briefs aside and opens his arms, and Bucky crawls into them, resting his head right over Steve’s heart.

“Daisy’s asleep – finally.  I thought she would never go down.  At least Joey sleeps through the night.”

Steve gives him a squeeze and kisses the top of his head.  “Speaking of,” he says, and rolls Bucky onto his back.  

“What are you -?  Oh!” he breathes, as Steve begins kissing his way down Bucky’s body. “Oh, Stevie.”

Over the years they’ve kissed hundreds of ways – filthy and sweet and shattered and joyful.  Through the good times and the bad, through their joys and sorrows.  But the one that Bucky remembers most is not the first kiss, or even the second.  He remembers that third kiss, standing in the moonlight, Steve cupping his cheek and promising with his words and his eyes and his kiss that Bucky’s heart would be safe with him.  That together they would be happy.

And they are.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [chicklette.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/chicklette) Come say hey.


End file.
